In a drab Dutch office block, a few doors down from the local branch of Carpetright and opposite a crane dredging sludge from the Schinkel canal, lives one of the world's most vibrant and influential record companies.

Armada Music, co-founded by DJ Armin van Buuren, is one of the biggest independent dance music labels in the world.

Home to artists like Afrojack, Fedde Le Grand, Loud Luxury and Erick Morillo, its sales and streams are growing at an annual rate of 20% to 30% and it has been named best global label six times at the International Dance Music Awards.

"Armin van Buuren was lucky to partner with such professional, forward-thinking people when launching Armada," says Carl Loben, editor-in-chief of DJ Mag.

"Together, they've piloted the label through choppy waters and into the giant independent behemoth it is today."

So while those offices are dreary and grey on the outside, the interior is buzzing with life.

The first floor houses a radio studio, from which van Buuren hosts his globally syndicated show, A State of Trance. Next to the studio is an in-house club, where artists can road-test new music on a state-of-the-art sound system.

The decor is full of sleek lines and eye-popping detail, from the graffitied portrait of Amy Winehouse hanging next to the photocopier, to the immense wall of vinyl that lines the boardroom.

Image copyrightArmada Music

Image copyrightArmada Music

"It's a mix between work and a party office," says Felix De Laet, better known as chart-topping club act Lost Frequencies.

"Everybody is super-hyped about what is going on. So I always have a big smile when I walk in the door."

That's exactly the atmosphere CEO Maykel Piron wanted to create when he extricated himself from Warner Music in 2003.

"It was always my dream to have a real creative environment and not be like 'OK, this is a record label, we sign the contracts and that's it,'" he tells BBC News.

"I want artists to come and make our music at the offices. It gives them an opportunity to look into our 'kitchen' and, because of that, we might sign them quicker."

Image copyrightArmada Music

Image copyrightFloris Heuer

The story of Armada begins in Ibiza, dance music's spiritual home, in summer 2003.

Back then, van Buuren found himself in "a weird situation" with US house label United Records.

"They were more focused on house," he recalls. "I believed trance was the future for me."

Making matters worse, United had given him his own offshoot but were reluctant to release any of the new music he'd discovered.

"So I was at a point like, 'I'm sitting on this amazing pile of demos and I just want to release them.'

"And Maykel said in literal words: 'Well, I can do it myself and I can do it better.' And so we did it."

'One-man show'

Along with van Buuren's manager David Lewis, they launched Armada (an acronym of their names - ARmin, MAykel and DAvid) with Questia's pumping floor-filler Nexus Asia.

From the outset, it was van Buuren's passion that fuelled the label's success.

"It was like a one-man show," says Piron. "We had one of the most successful DJs in the world, doing his radio show and getting all those unsigned records, so we started building the company based on that."

"That was a very nice kick-start for us, because with those older titles we were able to fill compilation albums," says Piron. "One of those first compilations sold, like, 10,000 digital copies in a weekend.

"That was how we built the company. We were never financed by a bank, we did everything by ourselves and, because the money came in, I was able to hire more people."